Dr. Vered Padler-Karavani received her PhD in biochemistry from Tel Aviv University. She then did her postdoctoral training with Prof. Ajit Varki at The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and subsequently established The Laboratory for Glycoimmunology at Tel Aviv University The George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Department of Cell Research and Immunology, The Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research. Her research combines glycobiology, immunology, bio-nanotechnology, cancer research and xenotransplantation, and involves cutting edge technologies within these disciplines. She received several prestigious grants from the European Commission (Marie Curie, Health Consortium, ERC) to investigate various aspects of immunology of carbohydrates. With TRANSLINK health consortium (6 academic institutes, 5 hospitals and 3 companies from Israel, Italy, France, Spain, UK, Sweden, Canada and USA; https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/603049), she investigated risk factors of animal-derived heart valve implants, in ~5,000 patients. Her research is currently focused on studying mechanisms of glycan immune recognition and responses in animal models and in humans, in vitro and in vivo. Particularly, the immunological basis of anti-carbohydrate antibodies and their implications on cancer and heart diseases, and on developing novel diagnostics and therapeutics for such diseases. 

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The research activity of Professor De Castro is in carbohydrate structural chemistry, and her training in this subject started during her bachelor thesis, which focused on plant polysaccharides. Since then, even though Professor De Castro continued her work on carbohydrate structural chemistry, she shifted her interests and dedicated her activity to the analysis of the bacterial membrane carbohydrate components, paying attention, but not limiting the work, to Gram-negative bacteria and lipopolysaccharides (LPSs). This work has resulted in the development of state-of-the-art chemical and spectroscopical approaches that have been later applied with success to different kinds of carbohydrates, such as those from the bacteria of the gut microbiota or those from the giant viruses. This last topic is Professor De Castro's major field of research.
Professor De Castro is the author/co-author of about 130 peer-reviewed publications, an associated Editor for the journal Carbohydrate Polymers, and a member of the editorial board of Carbohydrate Research, Glycobiology, and Polysaccharides. She fruitfully collaborates with different research institutions, such as the Department of Plant Pathology (University of Nebraska Lincoln, NE, USA) and the Structural and Genomics Information Laboratory in Marseille (France).

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Professor Xuechen Li received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2007. After postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Prof. Samuel Danishefsky at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, he joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Hong Kong as an Assistant Professor in 2009 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2014 and Professor in 2018. He currently serves as the Associate Dean (Research & Graduate Studies) of Faculty of Science. The central theme of Professor Li’s research focuses on the chemical biology of synthetic biomolecules (proteins, carbohydrates, and glycoconjugates) to study fundamental biological questions and develop potential therapeutic applications. 

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Dr. Harry Brumer is a Professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories and Department of Chemistry, and an Associate Member of the Department of Botany and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, at the University of British Columbia.
Dr. Brumer’s research interests include the discovery, functional and structural characterization, and biotechnological applications of carbohydrate-active enzymes and carbohydrate-binding proteins. Through close collaboration with geneticists and structural biologists, research in the Brumer group seeks to bring molecular-level insight into the biological processes underpinning carbon flux in ecosystems ranging from the forest to the human gut.

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Professor Won Ho Yang received his Ph.D. from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in 2007. After postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Professor Jamey Marth at the UC Santa Barbara, he joined the Department of Systems Biology, Glycosylation Network Research Center, at Yonsei University as an Assistant Professor in 2019. His research interest is understanding the function of protein glycosylation in normal physiology and the pathogenesis of the disease.

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Dr. Juge has 25-year expertise in the molecular studies of carbohydrate-protein recognition in gut biology and microbiology, and food biotechnology. She is a deputy leader of the Gut Microbes and Health Institute Strategic Programme at the Quadram Institute Bioscience (QIB, Norwich, UK) and an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. Her previous research at Marseille University (France) and Carlsberg Research Institute (Copenhagen, Denmark) focused on the structure-function relationships of plant and microbial carbohydrate-active enzymes and their potential biotechnological application. Since joining QIB in 2007, she has led a Research Group focusing on the Glycobiology of Host-Microbe interactions in the gut. Currently, her group focuses mainly on defining how gut bacteria adapt to the intestinal mucosal environment and the role of mucin glycans in the crosstalk between the gut bacteria and the host. Their work uncovered novel sialic acid metabolism pathways in gut bacteria, contributing to their fitness in the mucus niche and communication with the host. They are also interested in how cell-surface glycosylation of gut symbionts influences the host immune response. Her Lab is involved in initiatives promoting Glycosciences in Europe, such as Sweet Crosstalk or Glytunes multidisciplinary European Training Networks or CarboMet academic-industry network.

 

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Dr. Guérardel is a senior researcher for CNRS (Lille University, France) and an Invited Professor at iGCORE (Gifu University, Japan). His research focuses on the structure-to-function relationships of complex carbohydrates, from microorganisms to higher eukaryotes, mostly in the context of host-pathogen interaction. His main objective is to understand how the glycans from both host and pathogen fine-tune the infectious process and how they may be used as diagnosis or therapeutic tools, with a keen interest in mycobacterial, fungus, and viral infections. To reach this goal, Dr. Guérardel integrates a wide range of scientific approaches, including synthetic chemistry, structural analysis using NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry, structural biology of proteins, and enzymology.

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Inka Brockhausen received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, Canada. At Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, she studied both structures and biosynthesis of O-and N-glycans and discovered a number of novel enzymes in the O- and N-glycosylation pathways. As an associate professor at the University of Toronto, her research interest focused on structural and enzymatic glycosylation abnormalities in cancer and cystic fibrosis. Further studies on the link between glycosylation changes in arthritis and inflammatory conditions were carried out at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. A major interest became the discovery of novel glycosyltransferases in bacteria, in collaboration with synthetic chemists, e.g., Walter Szarek, Ole Hindsgaul, Vladimir Torgov, and others that were instrumental in the synthesis of natural substrate analogs. Glycosylation inhibitors were developed that could alter the biological properties of cells or could be anti-bacterial compounds. Current directions in the Brockhausen lab at the Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences aim to understand polysaccharide synthesis in bacteria and fungi and the mechanisms of enzymes involved in carbohydrate metabolism. Brockhausen also has a keen interest in protein aggregation in neurodegeneration and is a member of the Centre for Neuroscience Studies. 

 

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Dr. Anja Münster-Kühnel studied Biology and Chemistry in a Teacher Education Programme at the University of Hannover in Germany. After the First State Examination in Biology and Chemistry, she received her Ph.D. at Hannover Medical School (MHH) in the Department of Microbiology by cloning the murine enzyme CMP-sialic acid synthase, an essential enzyme in the biosynthesis of sialoglycoconjugates. As a group leader at the Institute of Clinical Biochemistry, MHH, she continued the molecular characterization of this enzyme and the investigation of its nuclear localization. Further, sialylation-deficient constitutive and conditional mouse models have been generated to unravel the biological function of sialoglycoconjugates in the development and immune system, especially for kidney development and operation. Recently she started to investigate novel functions of polysialic acid beyond the nervous system.

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Dr. Lara K. Mahal is the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Glycomics and a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Alberta. Her work focuses on systems-based approaches to understanding glycans, complex sugars that encode information governing human health. She developed lectin microarray technology, a high-throughput method for analyzing glycans that is now widely applied to understand the role of these sugars in a multitude of systems, from clinical cancer research to host-pathogen interactions. She is also known for her ground-breaking work on microRNA regulation, including the discovery of upregulation as a common feature of the miRNA regulatory landscape. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Beckman Foundation Fellowship (2004), NSF CAREER Award (2007), Sloan Foundation Fellowship (2008), NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2008), the Horace S. Isbell Award (2017) and the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Glycomics (2019). In 2022, she founded the Glycomics Institute of Alberta (GIA) at the University of Alberta.
 

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Professor Nadimpalli is a Senior Professor in Biochemistry at University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India. He did his postdoctoral training at DAAD, Wuerzburg and Goettingen, Germany, and has been a faculty at University of Hyderabad since 1986. 
His glyco-related contributions include development of novel affinity methods to purify mannose 6-phosphate receptors, discovery of LERP from Drosophila and lysosomal enzymes and their receptors in Hydra. He also identified and purified several plant and animal glycosidases, contributed towards understanding the physiological significance of Cucurbitaceae seed lectins and glycosidases.
His Research Interests are (1) Evolution of lysosomal biogenesis; (2) Legume and non-legume lectins-structure-function relationships; (3) Physiological functions of Plant lectins and glycosidases from legumes and non-legumes.

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Dr. Sriram Neelamegham is a UB Distinguished Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Medicine at the State University of New York-Buffalo. His laboratory works at the interface of engineering and medicine, with applications in studies of human disease mechanics. Such work falls under the umbrella of "Systems Glycobiology," where high-throughput experimentation and mathematical modeling are coupled to describe the interplay between the competing glycoEnzymes that regulate cellular glycosylation patterns. Prof. Neelamegham has published over 140 research articles, book chapters, and patents. He receives the NIH Independent Scientist award, the 2015 State University of New York Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, and the 2018 Schoellkopf medal from the Western New York American Chemical Society. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering (AIMBE) and Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). He has served on NIH advisory panels and editorial boards of various journals. He is currently the Discussion Leader developing the Symbol Nomenclature for Glycans (SNFG) at the NCBI-glycans resource. Before moving to Buffalo. Prof. Neelamegham received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering/Bioengineering from the Rice University and completed his post-doctoral training at the Baylor College of Medicine. 

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Dr. Narimatsu is an Associate Professor at Copenhagen Center for Glycomics, Ph.D. (2008, Tsukuba University, Japan). His study focuses on the structure, biosynthesis, and genetic regulation of complex carbohydrates. He received training for eight years at the glycobiology lab, Research Center for Medical Glycoscience (RCMG) in Japan. Joined a Center of Excellence in Glycomics funded by the Danish National Research Foundation at the University of Copenhagen in 2012 and contributed to developing a comprehensive and high-throughput platform for CRISPR/Cas9 gene targeting of the human glycome (GlycoCRISPR), a large library of glycoengineered cells (GlycoDisplay), a cell-based platform for the display and production of human Mucin tandem repeat (MucinDisplay). His research interests include a basic understanding of genetic regulation and biosynthesis of protein glycosylation, consequences of deficiencies in glycosylation in diseases, and biomedical applications. 

His group has taken a global "glycogenome" engineering approach to protein glycosylation and proposed a Cell-Based glycan array platform to display the human glycome–i.e., display of all human glycans on proteins, proteoglycans, and lipids. This self-renewable array is useful for discovering biological interactions involving glycans, and screening of true high-affinity interactions with glycans requires the natural biological context of specific proteins and cell surfaces.

 

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